Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Slip of the Tongue or Honest Mistake?

There is one thing that I have always thought this Administration lied about...not WMD, or secret plans to gain oil, or an agenda to aid big business through environmental policy...but United Airlines Flight 93. It has always been my belief that the flight that was 'taken down by passengers' in that Pennsylvania field, was actually shot down by the military. I have never blamed the powers that be for revising the story if that was the case. The American public couldn't have handled that horrific truth in those days following September 11th. The pain was tangible and raw and one more thing could have broken wills and spirits.

In my mind, there were just too many coincidences -the barren field, the fact that eyewitnesses claimed to see another plane flying with the United Airlines plane, and the fact that there was nothing left.

After reading the 9/11 Commission Report, I changed my mind and decided that maybe all of those things had happened that neatly, and of their own accord. The report found that planes were scrambled and permission given to shoot the plane -but that the scramble formation/plan was left over from the Cold War days and the planes went out over the Atlantic...leaving no time to have come back east and taken out Flight 93. I was pacified with that explanation. Comforted really.

Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq on Christmas Eve. In an address to the troops he said this:
"I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten – indeed the word 'terrorized' is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be." (Read the story)

Slip of the tongue? I don't know. But all my old suspicions have been unearthed. I am not sure why because if the plane was shot down -it was a justified precaution and most likely saved more lives than it took, BUT truthfully, I don't want to know. I don't think the families want to know. Let them rest in the idea that their loved ones took down that flight. That their loved ones sacrificed themselves for the good of the Country. That 'Let's Roll' meant all that we thought it did...

(The Pentagon insists this was just a mistake and Rumsfeld believes the passengers aboard Flight 93 were indeed the ones that brought it down -CNN).